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			<h1>T-Mobile&apos;s scam</h1>
			<p>Day 00547: Sunday, 2016 September 04</p>
		</header>
<p>
	Current countdowns:
</p>
<ul>
	<li>20 unfinished weblog entries in <a href="/en/weblog/2016/07-July/">July</a></li>
	<li>15 days until mobile voice/<abbr title="Short Message Service">SMS</abbr> service with my current carrier ends</li>
	<li>45 days until mobile data service with my current carrier ends</li>
	<li>42 days until my old domain registrar can no longer counter my charge dispute</li>
</ul>
<p>
	I&apos;m trying to transition from a mobile plan with a telephone line attached to a mobile plan that is data-only.
	Quite frankly, I can&apos;t stand the telephone number system.
	In the past, telephone numbers were like <abbr title="Internet Protocol">IP</abbr> addresses.
	They were simply machine-readable integers that helped the telephone network know where to route calls.
	This isn&apos;t very user friendly.
	Whould you want to type <code>https://198.35.26.96/</code> to reach Wikipedia? No! How many people would even recognize Wikipedia&apos;s <abbr title="Internet Protocol">IP</abbr> address if they saw it? Instead, here on the Internet, we have a little thing called <abbr title="Domain Name System">DNS</abbr>.
	It allows us to point human-readable and human-memorable names at these machine-readable numbers.
	This makes the Internet a much more user-friendly place! However, for some idiotic reason, people just accept the telephone number system.
	The only gripe that they seemed to have about it was that if one switched providers, they&apos;d have to change what number was used to reach them.
	Expecting to keep your numeric address when you switch telephone providers is like expecting to keep your numeric <abbr title="Internet Protocol">IP</abbr> address when you change Web server hosts or expecting to keep your postal address when you move! These numbers are addresses, not names.
	Again, back to domain names, when you switch Web or email hosts, you update your <abbr title="Domain Name System">DNS</abbr> records to point to your new address.
	This name/address system was eventually implemented in the telephone network, at least here in the United States.
	However, it was done in a horridly screwy way.
	Instead of making the names human-memorable, the names are all-numeric and match the old addressing scheme! Let&apos;s be clear here.
	Once, your telephone number used to be an address on the telephone network.
	However, it&apos;s now a name that needs to be looked up in a lookup table, similar to <abbr title="Domain Name System">DNS</abbr>, but without the benefit of human readability! Telephone numbers now lack both the efficiency of bare addresses and most of the benefits of lookup table names.
	This is exceedingly foolish.
	Even worse, everyone seems to expect everyone else to be okay not only being reached via these numbers, but especially <strong>*identifying*</strong> as these numbers.
	I want no part of that, and as such, much prefer email.
	I only even have a mobile telephone line because my network of choice, T-Mobile, doesn&apos;t offer service in Coos Bay.
	The only other <abbr title="Global System for Mobile Communications">GSM</abbr> provider in this section of the globe is AT&amp;T, and their more reasonable plans, which are offered under the Cricket name, all come with telephone lines.
	Now that I&apos;m back where my favorite network actually covers, I&apos;m going back to a data-only plan.
</p>
<p>
	I&apos;d heard about a deal at T-Mobile in which they will give you a gratis tablet.
	The catch is that you have to be on postpaid service to get it.
	You also have to stick around for two years.
	While T-Mobile won&apos;t call it a contract, the tablet is only gratis with this two-year agreement.
	Normally, I much prefer prepaid service.
	I&apos;ve never even had a postpaid account because I find them to be noxious.
	However, their prepaid and postpaid tablet plans are the same price, so I decided to go in and ask them about it.
	T-Mobile has a no-credit-check option that would eliminate much of the pain of a postpaid account.
	There is no good reason for a carrier to have your Social Security number! I still prefer prepaid plans because they put the customer in control instead of the company, and I hate the idea of selling my freedom for two years.
	Still, the plan that comes with a tablet is the same price per month as the plan that doesn&apos;t, so it was tempting.
	There was also a lack of clarity that needed to be dealt with.
	Supposedly, current customers can get the tablet with the plan that I would want, but new customers are required to get a plan that costs 350% of the price of that plan.
	That&apos;s a little much! I needed more information.
	The first thing that I got cleared up was yes, the inexpensive plan does qualify new customers for the tablet, regardless of what the promotional material claimed.
	T-Mobile&apos;s been trying to push their new unlimited data plan, but it&apos;s much more expensive for those of us that use only slightly above one gigabyte of data each month.
	I&apos;d heard that with the no-credit-check option, a down payment on service is required, so I next asked how much that would be.
	As it turns out, if you don&apos;t want to hand over your Social Security number, you don&apos;t qualify for the tablet offer.
	In other words, the tablet offer is only a scam to get your Social Security number! Shame, shame.
	I expected better of you, T-Mobile.
	This is likely a big part of why T-Mobile pushes for people to go postpaid instead of prepaid though.
</p>
<p>
	Ronsor has disconnected their <abbr title="Internet Relay Chat">IRC</abbr> server from <a href="ircs://xopo4w4zpyw2u43n.onion:6697/">Umbrellix</a>, so I feared that I was going to lose contact with them again.
	It seems like they keep popping up, connecting their server to tiny networks that I&apos;m on, then disconnecting and disappearing.
	Last time, they claimed that their server was operational, but I never could connect to it.
	This time, they said that their old onion address was up, but again, I couldn&apos;t reach their server.
	I asked them about it today, and they took a look and fixed the problem.
	Hopefully as Ronsor&apos;s nomadic piece of the Internet moves again, I won&apos;t once again lose my friend.
</p>
<p>
	I&apos;ve located the reason that I didn&apos;t notice the missing discussion assignment in <span title="Globalization">POLS 1503</span> when I was reading through the week&apos;s work before.
	While the question set doesn&apos;t exist on the discussion board yet, the questions are present in the reading material.
	I can begin working on answering those questions tomorrow.
	However, because of the strange way in which the University of the People discussion boards are set up, we students aren&apos;t able to speak in the discussion room until the professor formally asks the questions.
	In addition to writing up my answers to what it appears that the questions will be, I need to try again to contact the professor about the issue.
	This time, I will attempt a more direct approach.
	If I can find email addresses, I will try writing a letter.
	However, if the University of the People interface isn&apos;t having issues, we seem to have ten professors in that course.
	I can&apos;t be sure if we legitimately have that many professors, and if not, which one(s) are the actual instructors of our class, as I haven&apos;t seen any trace of any of these people around the classroom.
	I will try to contact them all, and hopefully not be pestering people that have nothing to do with the course.
</p>
<p>
	Speaking of course work, I finalized and submitted my learning journal entries.
	On one of them, I had originally planned to define thirteen words (the assignment said to define at least three), but I ended up cutting three of them out of the final draft.
	Both journal entries asked for information about me personally, instead of information about the topic of the course.
</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="/en/coursework/POLS1503/#Unit1">POLS 1503: Globalization</a></li>
<li><a href="/en/coursework/UNIV1001/#Unit1">UNIV 1001: Online Education Strategies</a></li>
</ul>
<p>
	It seems that our mother is registering Vanessa at the local high school.
	Is Vanessa not coming with us when we move? Our mother&apos;s threatened to leave Vanessa here before, so I can&apos;t be sure.
	Hopefully, our mother just plans to have Vanessa attend the local school until we find our new home, then have Vanessa transfer.
</p>
<p>
	<strong>*EDIT <a href="https:/en/weblog/2016/12-December/18.xhtml">Day 00652: Sunday, 2016 December 18</a>*:</strong> I&apos;ve moved &quot;learning journal&quot; content to a separate page now, accessible from the <a href="/en/coursework/">coursework</a> section of the website.
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